US and China fail to see eye-to-eye on poultry
US and Chinese officials recently met in Beijing for agricultural trade talks. However, the two parties failed to agree with issues regarding poultry trade.
China’s zero-tolerance for salmonella in raw poultry was discussed in length. “How can you produce poultry without traces of salmonella? It’s killed when you cook it,” said USDA’s Undersecretary for Farm and Foreign Agricultural Services Mark Keenum, who led the US delegation. As for China, “They simply reaffirmed their position,” he stated.
On the other hand, Keenum said that the USDA is working to produce rules that would allow China to export cooked chicken products to the US. China approached the table with their own list of protests about US food products, with labelling problems, falsified certificates and poor quality among their complaints.
Vice minister of China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection, and Quarantine (AQSIQ), Wei Chuanzhong, will shortly be leading a delegation to Washington for bilateral talks on food safety with the USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety Richard Raymond.
In conclusion, Keenum hopes that the issues will be resolved before December’s cabinet-level Joint Commission on Commerce and Trade meeting between the two nations.
Related links:
Join 31,000+ subscribers
Subscribe to our newsletter to stay updated about all the need-to-know content in the poultry sector, three times a week.
